A Chick and A Chair

Poker, from my perspective.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Aboot time I blogged, eh?

Once again it has been ages since I added anything here so I decided it was about time to get on it. Truth is, I haven't had much going on that I felt was interesting enough to write about. Since all my poker content goes on Card Squad and I rarely leave my house anymore, I have been in a bit of a slump when it comes to writing personal stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy spending time at home. When it becomes all I do though I get a little snaky, but isn’t a permanent thing, it is just where I am at right now and I'm ok with that.

There are certain advantages though. Not having to get up to an alarm, kicking around in sweats and a t-shirt all day - there are worse things. I’ve also been reading an extraordinary amount lately. Mostly poker books – some for the second or third time, but also a few that I recently picked up. I’ve reached another plateau in my game, so it was time to review and mix up my strategies again. I’ll be discussing that on CS soon, so for now I will digress…

I sweated April in the 17k on FT tonight, and she did an awesome job – even though she was short stacked for part of it she managed to steal blinds when appropriate and double up when needed. She placed in 17th, which was within the top 3% of the field. Congrats, April!

I’ve had several conversations lately about where people live, and what it is like where I/they are from – so since I am (one of) the resident ‘foreigners’ of the WPBT I thought I would add some pictures of my city and surrounding area. Perhaps I will even debunk the myth that we Canucks all live in igloos and ride dog sleds ;)

Please note: I did not take these pictures (obviously). I'm sure the postcard-quality gave that away already ;) I found them around the web, but they are pics of some of my favorite places in and around Calgary. You can drive to any of the places shown outside of Calgary within one to two hours - shows what a diverse landscape surrounds us here.

This is a view of the Calgary Stampede (Rodeo) Midway and downtown in the background.

Canada Olympic Park, which is within the city of Calgary. Those are the ski jumps from the '88 Olympics

Better view of the ski jumps

A view across the city looking towards the mountains. This is only a tiny portion of the city though - the population is ~1,000,000 here. The mountains are a 45 min drive away

A closer view of downtown

Downtown Calgary at night

Downtown Calgary at night again

The Bow River, downtown and the mountains

East of Calgary, all you will see for days (and days and days) is farm fields. This one is Canola

And if it isn't farmland, it is fields and fields of nothing

This is Drumheller, which is in the Badlands, about 1.5 hours NE of Calgary. This was dinosaur country, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology is located here.

Another view of the Badlands

These are Hoodoos which are natural structures formed by erosion

The Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta. This is the most amazing hotel I have ever seen, short of ones in Vegas. It is built on the side of a mountain which is obvious in this picture. It is about an hour's drive away from my house in Calgary.

Another view of the Banff Springs.

And yet another view. The town of Banff is to the right of this picture. Very touristy place, very scenic, and very expensive.

To give you an idea how small the town of Banff is, and how large the mountains are